


where are those boys of yesteryear?

by offlight



Series: time and happiness [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offlight/pseuds/offlight
Summary: A recollection of their childhood, their adulthood, and the orbit that always brings them back to each other.// set immediately after the second battle of gronder post timeskip in the blue lions route





	where are those boys of yesteryear?

Dimitri had always been an ugly crier. The time Felix remembers best is a time when they were small, when they tried to go out riding on their own. They were still young enough to be moved by how impressive Glenn looked while out learning maneuvers with the standing army, stupid enough to want desperately to reenact their own version of that maturity and grace.

The two of them together, at that time, had always been near-unstoppable in their recklessness when left alone. It was something about how Ingrid had always been mature for her age and how Sylvain, given the two-year age difference, didn’t entertain some of their more childish requests. All he had done was mutter something about it being too dangerous for them to leave for the open plains beyond Fhirdiad without a retinue before losing interest in them when supper was called.

Felix remembers this day because it had been freezing and he had not brought enough to wear. Dimitri had offered his fox-fur cloak numerous times with open concern, a cloak so big and grand on his small form that he had to keep grasping at both sides to keep it close enough for warmth, but Felix remembers turning him down. He remembers being convinced that he doesn’t need it, because he had never seen Glenn wear a cloak when he went out riding.

They could not climb onto the enormous warhorses without any help, so they chose the two smallest fillies and clambered onto feed boxes to climb astride. He remembers his fingers numbing around its frozen mane—still too inexperienced to remember a saddle—and feeling the world lurch, a bit nauseatingly, as his horse moved slowly towards the light outside the royal barn.

Of course, he does not make it.

It has been too many years since the incident. He doesn’t remember the in-between—only remembers the loud crash and turning to see Dimitri on the ground, hands over his mouth, tears welling in his eyes, spears scattered around him from the rack that he had knocked over when he was bucked off.

His nose had not yet grown into his mother’s high bridge, so when he was upset it scrunched up, in the middle, into a nub. He was a snotty crier with far too many tears for Felix’s small hands to wipe away, even when he balled up his shirt in his fists. And even then, as a child, he never wailed—only whimpered and shook and grabbed at Felix’s sleeve with a bloody hand as Felix led them into a run through the castle halls to find the royal physicians.

He had lost his left front tooth in that incident. Luckily, it was only a baby tooth. An adult tooth comes in a few months later, replacing it, with no one any the wiser. Felix is now the only person left alive who remembers this incident.

.

It is something that he thinks about because someone has to. How to stop Dimitri if he grows to be too unwieldy—

He thinks of it the most in the times when he stands in the shadows of buildings and watches Dimitri as he hulks and scowls about, muttering to himself. In these moments he feels very cold and numb, filled with resolve.

They often took combat classes with each other while growing up. One of their old instructors was an elderly knight whose movements were quick and sharp. Felix remembers that he had a magnificent beard, so white and long, that he braided and threw over his shoulder to keep out of the way while sparring. This had been his favorite instructor because he had the speed and the agility to disarm them within seconds of them drawing their blades. If Glenn had been the ideal of what he had wanted to be, this man was how he would achieve it.

One of the first lessons that they learned, even before they became proficient with weaponry, is how to prepare for battle.

“You have to imagine it,” Felix remembers him saying, rapping at his head with his knuckles, “No way to be good at combat without experience, but you can only die once. In your head, you can die as many times as you need. Don’t be kind to yourself. Think of the worst possible scenario. Now, think of how you’ll get out of it. Visualizing it is like practicing, even when your sword arm is too sore to lift a blade.”

So Felix does.

He watches Dimitri and plans his attack—he has already ruled out rushing him. He knows that Dimitri has a mean kick at an astonishing accuracy, with enough force to break his ribs. Despite Felix’s insistence on calling him a boar, Dimitri is quite cat-like as a fighter, with the ability to shift his weight in a fraction of an instant. This now-instinctual move is also something that they both learned from the old knight, so Felix understands its advantages well.

A struggle of strength between them would not end well for him. This means he needs to catch him by surprise. But nothing that would rope in any of the others, so he has to be careful and quick and modify his plans depending on where they are in the monastery. If there is a chance he can get a height advantage, he must take it. That would give him the chance to jump down. The biggest weak spot in all of his armor, of course, is his face and neck. A blade to the throat would do the job, easy—best if it's through the artery, for him to bleed out quick. The good thing is that Dimitri is now missing an eye, so his field of vision is smaller. His depth perception is off. Hell, Felix could even take out his other one and truly make it an easier job.

Another avenue—bludgeoning. Something heavy to the head, quick and painless. There is plenty of marble around Garreg Mach, plenty of metal artifacts that could do serious damage with some momentum. Even if Dimitri didn’t die immediately, he may pass out. That would make him an easier target, of course. The best thing about this plan is that it could still be effective even with healers—if Dimitri takes enough damage in his head, then maybe he simply wouldn’t wake up even if his heart continued beating.

Felix works through each of these options. He visualizes move after move, plotting how he’d engage Dimitri in combat, what could be used as a weapon nearby, each decision branching off into dozens of options depending on how Dimitri would respond. He knows Dimitri’s fighting patterns well enough to know when he may guard, when he’d attack, where he may find weaknesses in Felix’s form.

He is very meticulous in these imaginings. He does not stop, in any of these possibilities, until he reaches what would be the killing blow—because he is incapable of imagining beyond that. For some reason, his brain refuses to push further. In his head, Dimitri’s blood is not the bright red of blood in real life but instead is nebulous, smoke-like. His heart never stops beating, eyes never lose their glint.

When he reaches this point, Felix’s mind winds itself back and starts down another route. He does not know why this happens and does not have the time to question it, so automatic is his instinct to continue. In this way, Dimitri never truly dies in his head, but always comes pretty damn close.

.

A small survey of Felix’s moments of weakness, as identified by himself:

1\. When eyeing the dark shadows punched under Dimitri’s eyes, he wonders if Dimitri still has a tendency to kick in his sleep. This had been a significant problem when they were younger and Felix had insisted on sharing a bed. Though Dimitri had quite a large bed with plenty of space, he also had a bad habit of gravitating towards warmth. This would be fine, considering Felix is quite an unmoving sleeper, but Dimitri also has the habit of flinging his limbs. During their year of peace as students, Felix had wondered if there were moments when he accidentally punched or kicked the wall when asleep. After the reunion five years later, he wonders if the nightmares make it worse.

.

The walls at Garreg Mach, in their dormitories, are thick. Sound does not carry well through stone.

Felix is convinced that, in their year before the war, he was the only one that realized Dimitri was screaming in his sleep. At the time, he wasn’t entirely sure that this was the case. He couldn’t make out anything more than the slightest muffle through their shared wall—but he could recognize the timbre of that voice anywhere. He has spent too many hours of his life hearing it to not.

Something about all of the crying had made him feel out of control. At Linhardt’s suggestion, he crafted earplugs out of candle wax and was finally able to reclaim a measure of peace, though it still didn’t help him much with sleep.

Five years later and it is much worse.

Dimitri no longer sleeps. He has not slept properly in what looks like eons, the shadows under his eyes punched so deep and his face so haggard that Felix could guess at the shape of his skull underneath his skin. He wanders the monastery at night, alone aside from the night guard, casting hulking shadows against the walls.

Felix knows this because he has gone out, numerous times, to make sure that Dimitri doesn’t completely run off on his own to go after Edelgard. This is why he knows firsthand that instead of sleeping like a human, Dimitri now roams the grounds until he collapses from exhaustion and drags himself off into nearby bushes, hiding like a wounded animal, to pass out for a fitful hour or so before he rises and begins his circling anew.

Felix watches him do this three or four times in the course of the first week they reclaim the monastery. It’s hysterically tragic in a way that makes him wish Dimitri would just pass out on a rock, split his head in two, and die on the spot as penance for all of the oxygen he has wasted.

The only downside to this creeping around is that, in the open, his screaming becomes unbearable. Everybody knows about the nightmares now. It scares them.

This is why Felix finally descends from his room one night when he hears it winding up, fed up, to go and paw through the bushes and find Dimitri. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he finds him. Maybe knock him out with the hilt of his sword to the head—would that work, if he was already technically asleep?

Maybe. It might knock the nightmare out of him. Better yet, it might just kill him, Felix thinks, and the thought calls to mind the image of Dimitri’s corpse, thrown aside like an old coat, added to the ranks of the dead. It’s something that he thinks about constantly these days while feeling the weight of an unspoken responsibility—who else would have the mettle to stop Dimitri if it was truly necessary? But there is something about this thought that makes his head hurt.

This time, Dimitri is curled up in a junction between two tree trunks. Up close, he can pick out the despair in his voice. Whatever he’s yelling almost sounds like gibberish, but Felix can decipher a few words that curdle in his stomach. It is far enough from the dormitories that Felix is reassured that it’s likely he hasn’t woken anyone else just yet, but it’s only about time.

There is no easy way to do it. Felix settles for shaking his shoulder.

“Get off the ground,” he snaps.

The shaking is too mild—Dimitri is already shaking in his sleep—and the order too quiet.

Felix tries again, rougher and louder this time. The mumbling finally drops in volume, into something uncertain, before it stops. The silence is so stark that Felix hears ringing in his ears. But it’s fine, the job is done. Dimitri can keep sleeping out here for all he cares, as long as the racket stops.

He is turning, ready to leave, when he hears—

“Why is it you?”

A hand pulls on his sleeve. An overwhelming rush of deja vu.

He looks down. Again, with the ugly crying. There is dirt mottled against Dimitri’s cheek, clinging to his tears and creating a thin crust. Felix has to fight his instinct to plant a boot into that face.

“Please, I promise I will—” Dimitri starts, trails off. His gaze doesn't look like his own and his tone, even, sounds too breathy, but the emotion is so thick when he speaks that his voice cracks from it. “I beg of you, do not look at me like that, please—I promise I will do better, for you—”

It’s so different from his usual, from what Felix has now accepted to be the norm, that he pauses for a moment.

Dimitri pulls on his arm, presses his filthy forehead to the back of his hand, whispers, “Please, Glenn—”

Felix yanks his arm away.

He’s careful to walk back at a steady pace. He makes a point of controlling his breathing to accomplish this feat. He fights to ignore the pleas behind him, though they follow him all the way to his room.

.

Dimitri is sick. Sickness is best treated with rest and nutrition, except this is a deep sickness that has somehow rooted its way into the marrow of Dimitri’s bones and into the core of his heart, twisting into knots the boy that Felix had grown up with.

Felix never studied white magic. He’s very well aware that he doesn’t know much about healing arts and practices, so it should really be left to someone that _knows_ better to help Dimitri.

But of course, no one does. They dodge around him like he’s possessed, cringe when he opens his mouth, talk about him from a distance and with pitying eyes. It makes Felix want to give them all a good thrashing because he can’t understand how it is so hard for everyone _else_ to understand—that they will all surely die if their leader is undependable and unreasonable, but that he is undependable and unreasonable because he is very, very sick. It is not a question of having lost the person he once was, because Dimitri has always been like this and he has always needed help and not a single person—Felix included—could seem to figure out what he needed until it was much, much too late.

This is the part that makes Felix the angriest, that has his hands itching to throttle someone or something. The fact that Dimitri has been very sick for nearly a decade now and that Felix _still_ doesn’t know what to do.

.

A small survey of Felix’s moments of weakness, as identified by himself:

2\. When he lays in bed, there are some times when he thinks about how much easier death would be if it was a one-time loss. It was not easy to lose Glenn—but it is more than simply never being able to see him again. No one had warned him that he would also forget Glenn’s voice. That there would be moments when he has to think to remember which eye the mole had been under. That there is nothing he can do when he realizes that there will be a day where he will be older than Glenn, which is wrong because he was born to be younger. That he will never know how his brother would react to him joining the officer’s academy, to him growing up, to every little decision he’s made since the day of his death. That, from so many years of not celebrating, he has forgotten Glenn’s birthday and that, with every passing year, the world becomes more full of people who will never know him.

.

When they were young and training together, there was an exercise that the old, white-haired, braid-over-a-shoulder knight liked to conduct.

He liked to cobble together practice dummies of burlap and scrap fabric, thicker materials to emulate the sensation of cutting through the barrier of human flesh, sticks to mimic the presence of bones. In each of them he sewed in a bundle, the size of a closed fist, filled with buckwheat. Each is decorated in armor.

The practice went as such—each of them would have to fight through a small group of soldiers to reach the practice dummy. Afterward, they would be allowed one thrust of the sword or lance. They would target the little bundle. If they were successful, they would see the spill of buckwheat cascading down into the grass. The old knight would dismember the practice dummy and comment on the placement of the wound on the fake heart, estimate how long it would have taken for them to bleed out, how fatal it would likely be.

“This is the commander,” he’d said once, kneeling on the ground, cracking open the fake ribcage to get to the sack as Felix and Dimitri watched with rapt attention. “Know that in real life, they would fight like hell. They know that they are the heart of their army. This is why you go straight for them—take them out with one hit. You will likely only have one shot. But I promise that if you do this, the number of lives you will save from the surrender afterward will be well worth your effort.”

It only takes a few practices before they both memorize the average position of the human heart, begin to engrain into their bones the feeling of how much pressure is needed to kill, how far to dig their blades in, what type of wound best minimizes chances of survival.

Dimitri, with wherever he dredges up his confusing strength, finds it relatively easy to throw his spear forward with enough force to shatter through armor and ribs. When they dissect down his practice dummies afterward, they find the fake heart torn in a different shape and in a different location each time, always shredded through.

Felix is not as strong. Instead, he grows expert at targeting from under the sternum, stabbing upwards. His hearts are always pierced in the same place, at the same depth. After years of this practice, Felix knows exactly where to place his hand to catch the buckwheat as it spills.

.

Felix doesn’t see his father die. He’s too far away, helping a lieutenant with a headcount of his battalion. There were many that were injured in the chaos of the fire, of being trampled going up or down the tower, of the arrows and spears that are still pinning bodies to tree trunks. The burning tower had looked so bright and terrifying—heat crackling against his skin even though he was whole paces away—that it had reminded him of funeral pyres.

When it eventually collapsed, it had buried soldiers from all three factions indiscriminately. With the Empire and the Alliance both in retreat, the Kingdom has first claim over the bodies.

This is what Felix was busy with after the battle—picking through the wreckage for any of his own, trying to identify the dead through their charred faces, working with other officers to pull out anyone in Kingdom armor to lay out for others in the army to help identify. He has to be there because he is the one with common sense and because someone has to stop Ashe from trying to dig up all of the bodies when they barely have enough energy left for their own.

This is something that he has learned about war in the past few weeks—the more people that die, the longer it takes to clean up afterward.

It is because of all of this work that he misses it. He only hears the full story of what happened from Ingrid half an hour later, as he watches Byleth carry his father’s body back towards their camp.

It makes him think back on it afterward. He tries to calculate back in time to figure out what was so important that he wasn’t at his father’s side in his last moments. He isn’t certain, but he settles on a good guess—

When his father died, he had likely been staring into Bernadetta’s eyes, glassy and open, her face half-covered with dried blood. He had been thinking about how meaningless it all was.

.

Though he is a good fighter, Felix has always had one big shortcoming. That shortcoming is his night vision.

Ingrid has the best night vision out of all of them. There were times, during the war, when she had been able to pinpoint movements in the shadows of dark treelines in time for them to brace for surprise attacks. Felix, on the other hand, experiences a world in greyscale the moment dusk ends. Colors are impossible to discern and shapes become overwhelmingly blurry. Everything looks grainy and distorted, and rain makes it even more so.

This is why he can’t make out the way very well in the darkness, despite the fact that he had walked this route to the stables many times in the past. Instead, he advances only with the vision of his target in sight—a shadow, standing in the middle of the path, their face turned up to the rain.

.

A small survey of Felix’s moments of weakness, as identified by himself:

3\. What does Dimitri think of him now? Does he even think of him? Felix isn’t sure which thought is more terrifying—Dimitri hating him for not being there or Dimitri being so distant that Felix will never be able to reach him again.

.

Those years that Dimitri had been missing, presumed dead? Felix loved them. He had found peace in them. He had sat by himself in fields one night, threading blue wildflowers into braids of grass to make a little crown, burned it until it was nothing but ash. He had pocketed that ash for himself, stoppered it in a glass tube, kept it in his pocket. When he felt his head growing muddled, he would reach in to stroke it.

He had traveled with his father and discussed plans on securing their territory from Empire advancement, identified which villages to liberate or support next, and disappeared promptly for bed every time Rodrigue tried to reminisce about Felix’s childhood. He did not eat or sleep well, but that was fine because he felt driven and like he was fighting for a purpose. Maybe he just enjoyed the fighting. It is easy to find satisfaction in fighting when there is so much blood and terror and corruption around them.

But that was too impossibly, irresponsibly easy. This is why it hurts so much more when he does see Dimitri again and realizes that while he has been chasing some pretty mirage of peace and closure, Dimitri had been alone.

That day, Felix smashes the tube against the walls of Garreg Mach in a fit of anger.

.

He has always hated funeral rites, but they feel so much worse this time.

With Glenn, at least he wasn’t the one making all of the arrangements. That fell on his father—what clothes to dress him in, how he would be buried, what he would be buried with. Felix doesn’t remember much of these decisions and he doesn’t like thinking back on these times. He tries not to remember how inconsolable he had been—how the misery had phased quickly to violent outbursts of anger when other nobles came to give their inconsequential condolences and reassurances that at least Glenn had died _well_. These were the outbursts that had him confined to his quarters for nearly three months.

His mind, unbidden, goes back to how he had gone nearly half a year without seeing Dimitri. The Dimitri that greets him afterward is a mockery of the original, whose smile is soullessly thin and whose mannerisms are so stiff and restrained that Felix doesn't recognize him anymore.

Felix is not good with words. He doesn’t know what to say to Dimitri when they’re both like this. During those months there were many moments that he had wished that Dimitri died with the rest of them, because Felix is much better at mourning than healing.

He makes all of his father’s funeral preparations in a rush. He doesn’t care. Bury him however you’d like, he remembers saying. Dress him in the first thing you find. Things to bury with him? Whatever. Maybe a loaf of bread so he doesn’t starve. A wine glass. I couldn’t care less.

And the days continue on. Keeping a distance makes it easier and he manages to dodge all of the feelings until an afternoon where he stands before the room his father had occupied in the monastery, intent on clearing it out.

There is already a thin layer of dust on everything. The air has already taken on a quality of stillness, from not being disturbed in weeks. His coats and shirts have already begun to take on the scent of absence.

Felix stands there and can’t bring himself to move. He is overwhelmed by all of these clothes and belongings and how, though he could still picture in his head the times that his father has worn them, they are now undoubtedly worthless. Worst of all is the faintest scent in the air which reminds him of when he was younger, the sparse times where they were traveling and his father had allowed him to ride with him, holding him tight and teaching him the ways of horsemanship in a soothing and patient voice—

He turns and leaves. He doesn’t go to check the room again. In a few days, Sylvain goes to clear it in his place.

It is left, empty, for the rest of the war. Years later, it is finally put back to use in housing new monks.

.

They found no shortage of role-models while growing up, glimpses and pieces of the men that they’d like to be someday.

King Lambert, of course. Always kind, busy, but with a voice that could travel into rooms far down the hall. He had always swept up Felix like one of his own, throwing him in the air and booming about how large he’s gotten in the last few months, how he has to keep growing if he’s going to keep Dimitri in check. King Lambert was also the one that showed Felix what a persona looked like—demonstrated it with the way that his aura would grow solemn when he was in the presence of advisors and the way it would crack when he was alone with family. Felix still remembers, when none of his subjects were around, the way he would grab Dimitri like he was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, stuff him under an arm, and march them both to the kitchens for a sample of that night’s dessert. No one else had ever been able to make Dimitri laugh like that, to the point where he sounded like he was choking.

Rodrigue, by himself and in context of King Lambert. Felix still remembers the days when he and Dimitri were still quite young and had a tendency to trip over each other’s feet from how close they stuck to each other, how the adults would refer to them as ‘the little prince and his little right-hand man.’ This was a title that Felix had adored, back then. He loved Rodrigue and how he had a better poker face than King Lambert, loved the way that he was softer than the other adults and would stay behind to explain why they were being shooed out of rooms. And, truly, he couldn’t forget the feeling of his father’s hand on his head, a degree of acceptance in his eyes that he will never see mirrored in anyone else’s.

And then Glenn—always Glenn—Glenn who would take them out for sword drills before they were of age, who would sneak them dessert from banquets when they were still young enough to be sent away past a certain hour. Who would tease Felix to the point of tears, shake them both off when he was in the company of the other older boys, but who would also sit with them in front of the large fireplace in the Great Hall of the castle, would wait until they were both folded into a large bearskin blanket to keep out the draft from the windows before he regaled them with stories of kings and their knights, of the most honorable humans and their most honorable deeds.

Felix remembers the feeling of swelling pride in his chest, of the way Dimitri’s voice echoes in the cavernous hall as he asked about what Glenn would have done had he been in that scenario, the heady scent of spice billowing out from their goblets of cider like magic smoke, preserving the moment like resin.

He’s not the type to look for a silver lining, but there is one good thing he can pinpoint about their deaths.

He tries to see it as one approach at growing up—losing the people left in the world who remember the scared, lost, little boy he once was. It is Felix’s attempt at killing that child off completely.

.

A small survey of Felix’s moments of weakness, as identified by himself:

4\. If he truly has been training for all these years to be strong to avoid feeling helpless, to grow closer to how capable and mature his brother had been, what is he supposed to do now that it’s not working?

.

He would have been present at the Tragedy—likely would have died at the Tragedy—if it wasn’t for the fact that he had come down with a heavy fever a few days before and could not make the trip to Fhirdiad for Queen Patricia’s birthday. He had been raised on harsh Faerghus weather and should have known that it was a bad omen for him to fall so violently ill, to the point where he didn’t have the strength to lift his arms. Nevertheless, at the time they had seen it as nothing more than a terrible inconvenience.

The fever distorted his sense of time. That, coupled with the heavy curtains drawn over his windows, made it feel like he was drifting in twilight. To this day, he isn’t entirely sure how he was told and how he reacted. All he remembers is that everything happens in a fraction of a second, so quick and so inconceivable that he doesn’t have time to register it all.

The rumors that he had heard from the healers and the physicians was that there were no survivors. They stated that it was likely the entire Blaiddyd line was wiped out, along with their close friends, everyone that had been present in the castle at the time. Felix doesn’t remember but was rather told later by others that he had been completely inconsolable when his father came to speak with him that night.

“But he’s not gone,” he had apparently said, “There’s no way he could be gone.”

His father had apologized. Likely smoothed back his hair the way he always did, helped him wipe at his face. Felix remembers, clearly, this being the first time that he was forced to hear that accursed phrase—“He died a true knight.”

But that’s impossible, he remembers thinking. That’s stupid. He’s too young. They haven’t even come of age yet.

It is only days later, after his fever subsides, that he realizes his father had not been talking about Dimitri. That Dimitri had survived all along—that he had been hard to find, due to having been buried under a mound of corpses, which had likely saved his life—but that the person he should have been mourning the whole time had been Glenn. Glenn, who apparently died in a manner so grisly and terrible that no one would tell them the truth or give them any answers.

Felix wants to ask Dimitri about this when they next see each other, in half a year. But the Dimitri that he is reunited with has such dazed eyes, such a fake smile, that Felix feels like he has been cheated and tricked somehow. He doesn’t remember specifics of their reunion now, but he does remember his father grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away, scolding him for yelling at Dimitri just after he’s been through so much. He remembers that he had been crying.

Felix never gets any answers about Glenn’s death. He does get some answers on Dimitri though—gets them two years later, on their first battlefield, when he sees the fresh blood on Dimitri’s hands, the way that he looks at them, like this isn’t what he wants.

.

Felix has been told, since youth, to take good care of his weapons. He’s spent so long learning how to that it feels wrong—as wrong as everything else these days—when he drags his swordpoint against the ground, cleaving through the sound of rainfall with a harsh, metallic scraping sound.

Still, the sound is fitting. It signifies a coming.

The walk to the stables had felt like a walk to the gallows, and the entire time, he had found himself wishing it wasn’t raining so much. He wishes that he didn’t have to squint, hold a hand over his brow, and still be unable to make out Dimitri’s expression as he turns. He has rehearsed this murder so many times in his head, but never in his many iterations has he imagined not being able to make out Dimitri’s face.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Dimitri says, and for the first time in years Felix is close enough to hear the waver in his voice, under the volume and the harsh timbre. They have spent enough years orbiting around each other for him to know, even without the ability to see, that Dimitri is back to his ugly crying.

Felix raises his sword up and holds it out, points directly at Dimitri’s chest, presses it enough to where he can feel it catch in the groove at the center of his breastplate. He stays quiet because he doesn’t quite know what to say—still doesn't know what to say, even at the end.

He is in the middle of cobbling together meaningless words when he feels the faintest pressure pushing back into his hand—of Dimitri leaning into his sword.

His head burns. The ridiculousness of the situation is so overwhelming that Felix can’t help but laugh.

“Like this?” he asks. “You’ll really die like this?”

No answer.

“He—they—would have wanted me to protect you. Do you see anything left worth protecting?”

Dimitri has stopped speaking at a clear, audible level. Felix can only barely make out, “Do I have the right to deny you your vengeance?”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Felix says, before he can stop himself.

Dimitri’s head dips further. Felix wishes he would fight back like he does with the others, yell and threaten him for getting too close, because Felix knows what to do when things get violent and dangerous. They both do. It is what they are most comfortable with.

He wants that familiarity, so he acts.

Faerghus armor is not foreign to him. He’s spent years of his life learning how to put it on, the different types for different fighters, which specific lames overlap just enough to allow free range of movement. This is why he knows that there is enough space for the point of his sword just between the cuirass and the fauld, when angled just so, that makes enough room for him to slide his blade up through Dimitri’s flesh to within a finger’s width away from his heart.

He does a bad job. His hands are shaking too much, offsetting his angle. The push is not clean, he doesn’t put enough force in. Every inch of give feels wrong.

He is overwhelmingly distracted by the way that Dimitri’s blood is so hot on his hands. He finds himself more upset about the speed at which it’s washed away, by the rain.

Dimitri, for all of his sturdiness and invincibility, is finally showing signs of wavering. Felix can feel him shake too, around the sword—hears more than feels the sensation of Dimitri holding onto him for support, to keep himself standing upright. His breathing is thrown off. Felix can feel it against his forehead, can feel how warm it is.

They were trained by the same old knight, so they can both envision very well the distance left to close between Felix’s sword and Dimitri’s heart. Felix holds his breath and waits, as if expecting his blade to grow sentient and push the rest of the way there, as if it could dislodge the numbness in his arms that suddenly stops him from moving any further.

“Is this what you want?” Felix asks again, as confirmation.

Dimitri opens his mouth to answer, but is cut off by a sound that shears through the rain.

It is a voice behind them, calling—“Felix?”

Their professor.

.

A coward. Glenn would call him a coward, he thinks—but then realizes that Glenn would most certainly not be on his side—that despite all of his knighthood and his honor, he had never known Dimitri the way that Felix knows Dimitri.

It’s sad that there is also no way Felix could have explained it to him, just like there’s no way that he could have explained it to any of their friends—that Felix is only really acting out what Dimitri couldn’t do himself. That even in his extreme sickness, Dimitri feels infallibly responsible to the dead in the same way that Felix feels infallibly responsible to him, enough to where it curses him to keep fighting, where it curses him to keep winning. They could never truly understand how Dimitri has been teetering on the edge of becoming the Tragedy’s final victim, even a whole decade later, and how desperately he wishes for it.

But it would be nice if he was here. It would be nice if he was here and Felix was still young and Glenn had all the answers for a very simple, fair world. All he has, instead, is his best guess at what Glenn would say.

He thinks it would be something along the lines of—

“You idiot. You and Dimitri both have always been so _mopey_, since you were kids. I feel bad for the people of Faerghus, that they have to deal with you two. Really, why are you spending all this time whining about the dead when you still have so many people left alive?”

.

Something about hearing Byleth’s voice jolts him back down into his body.

The night grows clear. When he looks up, Felix notices that Dimitri’s gaze is already starting to grow glassy—to take on a quality that Felix has grown overwhelmingly familiar with in the past few years—and he is suddenly very aware of every pulse of his own heartbeat.

He knows now that the reason why he subconsciously stopped his blade. Felix had realized, in a moment, that he doesn’t give a damn what Dimitri wants anymore, if what Dimitri wants means he would be taken away like everyone else.

He had never thought that would be enough of a reason to stop, but he decides that he wants it to be.

It is a salty rain, that night, that burns his eyes and sits heavy on his tongue. He raises his voice.

“Professor—if you could help—”

.

A small survey of Felix’s moments of weakness, as identified by himself:

(an addendum to Item 1)

It happens at night, after Dimitri has been bandaged up and Felix’s life ardently threatened by nearly every single one of their friends. He is ready to slink off to stall his execution by Dedue’s hand for as long as he can when Byleth, to the surprise of everyone present, places him in charge of keeping watch over Dimitri, to see if he makes it through the night. This is why he is sitting in an uncomfortable chair, watching Dimitri as he sleeps.

An hour later, Dimitri shifts again, face turning towards him. Felix, knowing what he’s subconsciously searching for, raises his own arm to rest against the side of the pillow.

Another hour. Frustrated at watching the little furrow and crease grow deeper on Dimitri’s brow, Felix decides to just get it over with. He reaches under the covers to grab Dimitri’s hand, pulls it out, lays it close to his own, and waits.

It takes only a few more minutes before Dimitri finds his sleeve, curls his fingers around it like he’s done many times before, turns his nose into the fabric and exhales deep.

.

A flurry of colors and of legs, stopped when an arm reaches down and loops around a small child’s waist—

“Don’t lean too far!” Rodrigue scolds, keeping a more secure hold on him with his free hand. “There are too many horses, it would be dangerous if you fell.”

“Yes, father,” Felix replies obediently, settling his hands on the horse’s mane and leaning back.

They haven’t even started moving yet, but the energy at the beginning of the parade route is already high. There is too much to look at and his head turns quickly as they pass through the streets, his mouth open as he stares at merchants throwing spare stalks of flowers out towards them. There is so much stimulation—chatter from the merchants and the townsfolk, the rich and overlapping notes of lutes in the distance, an astonishing spread of colors and scents.

Their horse slows as the royal knights pass by to take the head, armor bright and dazzling in the sunlight, immortal in their youth and strength. They catch the flowers and tuck them into their helmets, laugh and wave them back towards the crowd to many cheers. When they unsheathe their swords and spears and raise them to the sky, it looks like a blanket of fallen stars.

Glenn is too far up for them to locate, surely in the vanguard with his helmet tucked under an arm, cocky smile and hair tousled just-so. Felix knows this because he caught his brother in front of the mirror for nearly an hour that morning, moving his hair this way and that and practicing a whole myriad of smiles, until he realized Felix was watching and shooed him out.

He cranes his neck to look for the royal family, instead. They should be about halfway to the back, as the main event, and not too far away from where he and his father are. His young eyes are already trained to spot blond hair from nearly a mile away.

“Settle down!” Rodrigue sighs as Felix leans too far and almost falls off again. “Really, can you not bear being apart from the prince for even an hour?” When Felix ignores him and keeps searching he sighs again, a mix of resignation and amusement. “As stubborn as always. Well, then. Let’s see if we can catch a glimpse of them.”

It is hard for Rodrigue to navigate their stallion through the nicely arranged lines of knights and nobles, and they get quite a few stares as they pass. It turns out that they were placed quite close to Queen Patricia and the young prince—King Lambert, of course, had taken the head of the procession, and would be the one to formally begin festivities, as befitting of his position.

They finally spot two of them in a gilded carriage just two formations back, decked out in royal blues.

Both Felix and Dimitri practically jump at the sight of each other. Felix is quite dazzled by the crown of blue-violet larkspurs perched on Dimitri’s head, a little lopsided in how oversized it is, and how it brings out the frosted hue of his eyes.

Rodrigue sighs and pulls alongside them. “Pardon us, Your Majesty, Felix insisted that we greet His Highness before the parade began.”

“What a happy coincidence,” Queen Patricia says, laughing. A sapphire-studded crown glitters on her head, unmoving, as she waves her hand. “Dimitri has been asking for him all morning, I was just about to send for someone to fetch you both.” Dimitri turns to tug just slightly on her sleeve, saying something that has him blinking quickly—his tell for when he’s feeling shy. She smiles. “Lord Rodrigue, if you would not mind, Dimitri would like to invite Felix onto the royal carriage.”

“Oh, no—Your Majesty, we couldn’t possibly—”

“Please, Lord Rodrigue,” Prince Dimitri says, face composed and voice incredibly solemn. “My mother will keep careful watch over us, I swear to you.”

Queen Patricia covers her mouth to hide her smile. “There you have it.”

Felix had been squirming like a caught fish ready to jump ship even while Rodrigue was still thinking. There is no fighting him when he’s in a mood like this. Rodrigue sighs and helps him—navigates their horse close enough over that Felix can take Dimitri’s hand and pull himself up onto the carriage.

“Make sure you take good care of His Highness,” he says. He means this teasingly, but Felix’s nod and “Yes, father,” in response are extremely serious.

Felix doesn’t turn to watch Rodrigue leave, so occupied he is with running his fingers over the edges of the petals on Dimitri’s flowers. They are incredibly beautiful, much more so than the wildflowers thrown by the townspeople. Dimitri seems pleased with the attention, swinging his legs and leaning in close so he can be heard over the hubbub.

“I requested for the florists to style you one as well,” he says, his face glowing from what surely must have been a very exciting morning leading up to the parade. Felix can catch the scent of syrup and spice on his clothes, likely from his breakfast. “Ingrid and Sylvain have their own, of course. But I actually like yours best.”

“Does it look like yours?” Felix asks, curiously, and Dimitri nods.

“All of them had to be the same color. But I noticed these flowers the last time we went through the gardens, do you remember, from last week? Mother helped me pick them, here—”

Felix leans to watch as Dimitri pulls out a wreath of sky-colored sword lilies from his mother’s side. They are large flowers. Felix is still young and doesn’t know much about flowers, but he knows that if Dimitri remembered and went back to pick them especially, he must have found them to be quite pretty.

“I like it,” Felix says. Dimitri beams.

“Come, I’ll put it on for you.”

He can tell, just from looking at it, that it will be too big to crown him in the way it’s meant to. The royal florists clearly didn’t spend as much time perfecting his as they did on Dimitri’s. Regardless, he doesn’t so much as hesitate before leaning forward and bowing his head. He feels the carriage give a soft lurch as they start off, the cheering from the sides dulling into a pleasant white noise.

The flowers are placed on his head and promptly drop down to his nose. His vision becomes awash in a sea of blue and he hears Dimitri's laugh at his side, childish and happy.

**Author's Note:**

> it really made me sad to see how felix spent a lot of time lashing out at dima in the game while also not being able to do anything to help him.. it really made me think abt how much it hurts to grow distant from someone you love and know and the powerlessness that comes with the thought of like "i know the most so i SHOULD be the one to act" it really made me want him to be able to let that go and just be there for dima instead of like.... dehumanizing him and berating him and just like. leering from a close distance.
> 
> of course this is also them so i used the opportunity to have felix literally stab dima (almost to death)
> 
> either way. i love these two a lot in context of each other!!!! stupid boys. 
> 
> title is taken (EXTREMELY OUT OF CONTEXT the poem is rly different from This) from D.A. Powell's "to his boy mistress" which i like a lot, but also these last two lines have always stuck with me and now give me immense feelings for felix and dima's lost childhood:
> 
> now I've spent myself in lines and lost. where is that boy of yesteryear?  
let him die young and leave a pretty corpse: die with his legs in the air


End file.
